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Policy Update: Two-Year Athlete Eligibility Requirement

posted Feb 21, 2018, 7:08 AM by Jeff Gall

Special Olympics Ontario has enacted a two-year eligibility criteria for all athletes advancing to
Provincial Games. The new policy, which will take
effect on February 23, 2018 and hence apply to our next round of Spring Sport Provincial
Qualifiers in 2019 is attached to this post. Please review the attachment (which contains
a memo of the policy’s enactment, as well as the policy itself).

Please Note:

It
is critical that coaches and team managers are well aware of this new policy
change. Please circulate this widely and thoroughly across your sport clubs via the coaches and team managers.

It
is also critical that coaches and team managers be sent their Sport Club
Verification Reports so that they can review who is registered in their
clubs in our database and begin adding any missing athletes. We will use our
database information to determine eligibility so it is essential that that
resource be up-to-date.

These reports should be distributed to each
sport club within your community on an annual basis – either by the
Community Coordinator, by your Sport Technical Coordinator, or by your Athlete
Registrar (whatever works best in your community).

If you need help generating Sport Club reports, please do not hesitate to
get in touch your District Developer.

Why is this criterion being added to the athlete eligibility criteria?

This policy has many advantages. Here are a couple of reasons why SOO is implementing this policy:

Allows SOO to know accurate participation
numbers in advance, which will help us craft conferences that contain
appropriate and meaningful conference competitions for all athletes. Aids in
identifying areas of weakness within conferences that require modification.

Provides a history of competition data that will
assist with seeding in team sports.

Allows SOO to provide hosts with realistic
expectations which will aid in all aspects of the planning phases of local and
conference competitions.